Why I Write

Perhaps there are chuckles at the subject of this post due to my apparent lack of writing around here, but I couldn't help but post this nonetheless. I have a quote my Mom found for me written on the inside of my journal that continues to inspire me to write, even when it feels risky. I googled it the other day for some background information since I am preparing to begin a new journal soon (thus a new inscription), when I came across the entire passage in which the quote was taken from. It was one of the most beautiful and eerily familiar descriptions I have ever read about the motivation and resolve I feel when I write. It was like the author pulled it right out of me and put it on paper. It's long, but oh so good. I broke it into paragraphs so it would be easier to read.

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write in a solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent.

I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain. I write to migrating birds with the hubris of language. I write to a form of translation. I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know. I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness. I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating--always anticipating.

I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around. I write because of the humor of our condition as humans. I write because I believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox. I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in the sand. I write because it belongs to the force of the moon: high tide, low tide. I write because it is the way I take long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness. I write because as a child I spoke a different language. I write with a knife carving each word through the generosity of trees.

I write as ritual. I write because I am not employable. I write out of my inconsistencies. I write because then I do not have to speak. I write with the colors of memory. I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as a witness to what I imagine. I write by grace and grit. I write out of indigestion. I write because I am starving. I write because I am full. I write to the dead. I write out of the body. I write to put food on the table. I write to the other side of procrastination. I write for the children we never had. I write for the love of ideas. I write for the surprise of a beautiful sentence. I write with the belief of alchemists. I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short. I write knowing I can be killed by my own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by both understanding and misunderstanding. I write out of ignorance. I write by accident. I write past the embarrassment of exposure.

I keep writing and suddenly, I am overcome by the sheer indulgence, the madness, the meaninglessness, the ridiculousness of this list. I trust nothing, especially myself, and slide headfirst into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it to shreds--and then I realize, it doesn't matter, words are always a gamble, words are the splinters of cut glass. I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient we are. I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love. {emphasis mine}

-- Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

I mean, I want to put this in a frame and hang it on my wall. For me, writing is as much a form of worship as singing or praying or reading. It is almost beyond my control, in that I can't help but do it. Yes it is hard and humiliating and vulnerable and terrifying. But it is also beautiful, precious, calming, and life-changing. Indeed it is "a dance with paradox."